Bright White Darkness: Bright White Darkness, #1

By Andrew G. Betts

The beginning of a thrilling, epic saga! Incredible events and terrifying confrontations await Jack Watson after he is recruited into a top secret group, charged with investigating a horrific terrorist attack and the theft of amazing scientific machinery.
Murder, secrets, lies, battles with alien beings, bombings, alternative dimensions, earthquakes and the threat of war with nations from parallel worlds! Jack, his new colleagues, the city of New York and indeed the whole world must face the most terrifying situation the planet Earth has ever known.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew G. Betts
• Release date: Aug 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223761693

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Copyright © 2014 Andrew G. Betts

All Rights Reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recordable or other electronic or mechanical methods, without permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical reviews or for promotional purposes and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover art by Andrew G. Betts

ISBN:

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Prologue

i

Slowly, carefully, the dragon was moved. They handled its dark, unfathomable skin with gloves, not wanting to get burned. They gently teased the dragon out of its position, curled around the tower, and then, with their hearts in their mouths hoping it would be over quickly, they divided the dragon up. Cutting it into several manageable segments, and loading them onto three armoured trucks. The tower did not stir, the dragon never awoke. The soldiers breathed again, happy to be alive. They watched the trucks disappear into the night, taking the dragon far away.

ii

The cold night felt hard, savage. Something was out there, something unknown, unknowable.  Something furious. A force getting closer, angrier, licking its lips and panting with the excitement of a perfect predator closing in on its frightened but helpless prey.

They ran.

What else could they do? It would reach them, they knew, before any real chance of escape, but still their muscles pumped, even while their legs shook with terror. Their wide eyes searched for exits, hiding places, directions away, away from the thing that bore down on them.

The futility.

Inevitably the panic, the thrill, the heart-stopping, mind crashing moment of capture. All was lost. All was pain.

Screaming.

The light disappeared...and the darkness, closed in.

PART ONE

The Machine

Chapter 1

The sun rose on a familiar world, our world. In parts the bright, hot sphere bathed the terrain in glorious warmth, in others it hid behind vast shrouds grey. Oceans stirred, their waves rippled and crashed and sprayed. People everywhere felt the world around them, a familiar world. They experienced its warmth, and its cold. Burning and sweating, freezing and shivering, toiling and tiring, waking and yawning, loving and embracing, hating and hitting, wanting and kissing.

The wind howled hard, stealing voices and searing exposed flesh, and it gently breezed, carrying blossom and the seeds of new life. Dogs barked, cats yowled, bees buzzed, monkeys howled, birds chirped, whistled, screeched and squawked. Engines revved and roared, music played, flames crackled, phones rang, guns fired, voices spoke, shouted, laughed, screamed, whispered. Work began, work stopped, across the globe, hammering, sawing, breaking, making, faking, destroying, discussing, refusing, ordering, serving.

Smells were everywhere! The fumes of fires and engines, the perfume of flowers and people, the odours of food and waste, the fresh smell of new things, the rotting smell of old things. It was such a familiar world, our world! Full of greatness and triviality, from the vastness of giant mountains, to the smallness of bacteria. From the tiniest nest, to the biggest cities activity covered the planet. The stars had glistened through the night and now the familiar sun shone down. Our star, our galaxy, our universe! No one could know, no one could possibly have guessed that it was not as familiar that morning as every human being felt it to be.

The city sat baking in heat. All across New York people talked and walked and worked. They loved, hated, cared, abused, rejected and consoled throughout the metropolis. Streets filled with busy people, lazy people, good people, bad people, young and old. Offices buzzed with networking and dealing. Factories clattered and banged with the sounds of manufacturing. Call centres clicked and chatted with offering, informing, warning and inquiring. Shops peddled food, drink, clothing, furniture, entertainment and information. In the city, like most other places in the modern world, information was usually everywhere. It appeared on screens both tiny and huge, it swam through the air on radio waves and digital signals, it shouted down from giant billboards on buildings and bridges, from advertisements on the sides of buses, cabs and other vehicles, and as it has for so many years, it came printed on stacks and stacks of paper. That day however, there was somewhat less information around. The air was not empty, terrestrial signals for phones, TV and radio still buzzed about in all directions, but the flow was somewhat weaker, thinner, a great portion of the usual telecommunications were absent. No signals had been received from satellites orbiting the Earth for over two weeks! No TV, no phone, not even a contact signal to say that the satellites were even there! Worse still, those responsible for tracking satellites, along with other near-Earth objects and the cloud of space junk that cluttered around the world; NASA, Jodrell Bank, ESA, the Pentagon and others, could not even confirm the positions of any satellites, no radar image could be found, nor could any be spotted through telescopes. It was as though they had all simply vanished.

The public were aware of the situation, in as much as they couldn’t pick up satellite TV and that cell phone signals were intermittent, and long distance ones impossible, but they had not been told why. Instead the only reliable news sources left, terrestrial digital television, radio, a considerably slower internet and of course the press had been told, and had duly reported, that enormous solar activity was responsible for the interference. Radioactive particles, invisible but powerful were disrupting the signals from the heavens. The internet, seemingly unbreakable and unstoppable though performing at a hair-pulling, fist-clenching rate, was nevertheless alive with conspiracies. Scientists, star-gazers, engineers, and those who just thought they knew better all disbelieved the official line, and argued with one another over the possible real cause.

The military, particularly those in the Pentagon and Kremlin, not to mention others in Paris, London and Beijing, were all perplexed and dangerously on edge as their experts failed to connect with or locate any of their higher orbit spy and communication satellites, although some, those on the very lowest of orbits practically inside our atmosphere, were still operating. Secretly, without the public being aware, armies, navies and air forces were being put on alert as nations eyed one another suspiciously. Stock markets were dramatically affected in the first few days, shares were tumbling, others rocketing, traders had to rely on lesser technologies and it felt like the world had moved back in time a least two decades.

No one blamed anyone else openly, no one knew who to blame because nobody, from NASA to the Pentagon, from Jodrell Bank to ESA, from Tokyo to Beijing, nobody knew what was going on. The cause of the satellites’ disappearance was a total mystery. In the White House and Pentagon more than one suggestion was made that it was a prelude to a possible alien invasion. Two weeks past, the public continued to be lied to, and continued to discuss on the net, over dinner and in bars how they knew they were being lied to. No invasion came. No progress was made on finding the cause. It would take months to plan a manned space launch, though the Chinese boasted in a special meeting at the UN that they could launch in just a few weeks, in the meantime drone craft were sent up by both the US and Japan to low orbit altitude looking for signs of the missing technology. None had any luck. Scientists at NASA were dumbfounded, and they had other problems too. Since the disappearance of the satellites they had also lost contact with all other technology out in the solar system, from the Mars Rover to the Voyager craft, along with the International Space Station and the four astronauts on board. The world, for all the normality and daily routine across its surface that morning, was in crisis!

Journalists hacked away at politicians and other officials. What was going on? What had happened to the world’s communications? Were ‘they’ any closer to fixing the problems? In some developing countries there were riots and protests as food and power supplies were disrupted, in the first world nations however, stockpiles and contingency planning kept life normal for the time being. The people of New York City and the rest of the USA mourned the loss of satellite TV and complained at the inflation of prices and interest rates and the drop of share values. Drivers roamed around struggling with old-fashioned printed maps instead of the ever-helpful sat-navs, but their lives went on as they had every other day. On this morning however, there was something new to discuss. For the first time in over a fortnight most of the press had a different front page story to grab the public’s attention.

For an individual paper it is obviously desirable to get the scoop alone. To be the only voice and everyone had to rely on what you said while the competition scrambled to catch up. This was not one of those days. It was a day when most of the major titles had gotten the information at the same time, whispered by an anonymous but reliable source to an excited huddle of hacks in the dark corner of a small bar, not far from Capitol Hill. Now the morning’s headlines read:

TERROR & LIES! OPERATION: GHOST! WAR IN THE SHADOWS! REVENGE FROM THE GRAVE!

It was an emerging scandal. The intelligence services in the United Kingdom of Great Britain had been holding onto a secret, the revealing of which was now causing shock and dismay amongst other nations, particularly their allies. They had shared this secret with their nation’s closest friend the United States and now, shocked at Britain’s behaviour, the Americans were telling the world!

No one had heard of them. No one knew what they did. The courage they had shown. It was all top secret. Not just a classified, can’t be verified secret. Not a known but hardly spoken of secret. It was a total secrecy, a complete blanket absence of facts and details. No surface to scratch. The events Dr. Ruth Feinstein was about to remark upon were so utterly confidential they had been erased from existence almost as soon as they were over. It had all been covered-up so well, but now apparently someone had talked, files had been discovered, and it was all coming out.

When the young man in the appalling but expensive-looking suite asked his first question after securing the tiny microphone to her lapel, Ruth answered. Zey ver angels, in her Polish accent, guardian angels. If we hadn’t used them, if we hadn’t had them to use, life would not be as it is here now. I’m not saying the world would have ended of course but...it’s certainly true to say, things would not have been the same, for our society. Tyranny, as we all know, is always ready to creep up on an unsuspecting culture. One that is too comfortable in its skin, believing that it no longer has any real enemies that cannot be dealt with from afar. The real threats always come from within. That is the sort of threat we faced, and that is what RT1, the team, dealt with. To our benefit, and to their own great cost. A tear ran down Ruth’s cheek.

How would you define the threat this ‘Response Team 1’ were tasked to fight?

It was the obvious question. She knew it was about to be asked. Still, so many years, so much silence, so much...nothing. No one had ever said anything. No details of any kind had ever, ever come to light. The UK Prime Minister himself had ‘apparently’ only learned of the facts just forty eight hours earlier. The President, and then in turn other world leaders whose countries were involved, had only been given a few details just twenty four hours ago. Then the news media were told. The next few hours after the headlines bearing the name of the mission had hit the streets her few surviving colleagues had vanished. Dr. Feinstein was not one for running. Not then, and certainly not now. So when the Prime Minister’s office called and informed her she was to be sent to the United Nations headquarters in New York to give testimony about Operation Ghost she had not refused.

So there she was. Exhausted and jet-lagged but ready to face her inquisitors with her own personal brand of defiant wisdom. A smaller room than she had expected. Lights blaring rather like an interrogation. A friendly, if badly dressed young man slouched in a modern, rather garishly colored chair naively asking her to describe events which she guessed were utterly beyond his own life experiences, as though they were on an afternoon chat show discussing something infinitely less earth-shattering. Ruth leaned forward to answer the question: who were the threat? A slightly mischievous smile breaking through her thin lips:

The dead.

Chapter 2

The threat was made by the dead, and for the dead, the threat fought hard. They fought with their vicious, crafty methods until we had no choice but to fight back in the same way.

A pause.

The dead?

Yes. I know sorry, but that’s how it was really. You see they knew they were lost, they knew the war was over and so they set in motion a plan, a plan of vengeance! Pure and simple. Evil, destructive revenge.

You mean of course..?

The Nazis, specifically Himmler, made sure there was something in place which would leave the world reeling. That was the plan, pathetically grand and overly ambitious like so much the Nazi regime did. They would make the world regret ever having faced down the Reich. Her face contorted with disgust as she recalled the deeds and tactics of the K.V.A. or Kinder von Ahnenerbe. The Children of Ahnenerbe, she explained when the interviewer’s expression turned to blank confusion at the organization’s German name. They were ruthless, psychotic, endlessly cunning and conspiratorial. Ahnenerbe was the name of an organization set up in the 1930’s by Heinrich Himmler and others to determine the pure ancestral roots of the Aryan race. It was obsessed with connecting proud ancient people to the Germanic line, insisting that Rome itself was originally of Germanic creation, hence the use of the eagle standard etc. which of course you’ll know. The young interviewer’s face suggested he really didn’t know but she continued without more explanation. She sat in the now warm room, getting warmer all the time while she felt the interest of those before her become more and more focused as she began to describe what little she knew of the workings and victims of the world’s most covered-up terrorist organization and the ultra-top-secret RT1 which eventually brought about their downfall.

Several years in the early 1990s had hosted a covert war fought across the UK, USA and possibly Russia, though details were still vague. Very, very few people had known of it. Involved were assassinations, lies and traitors within the very security services themselves. On the whole however, few civilians had lost their lives to the KVA. Quite simply because we stopped them! They would have murdered many if they could. The team hunted them down before the KVA had all their pieces in play, before they could cause the kind of destruction that was their real aim. It’s not the only time such tactics have been used, they still are today I believe. The KVA, it was their own name of course, they reveled in it, in the glory of being the avenging demons of their Nazi grandparents and great grandparents. They were master manipulators, they had contacts everywhere as I said. Ridding society of them meant also ridding it of people it was deemed too scandalous to publicize. We couldn’t let people know what was going on. We...

It’s quite amazing for us to believe this now, interrupted another young man with a French accent and using ‘that’ word all younger people now use to describe everything they see and hear. Amazing to think that a terrorist group, the KVA. Kinder van...

Von. Kinder von Ahnenerbe.

An organization as you say, actually planned large scale attacks and we’ve only now started to learn of it.

I agree, piped in a young Chinese woman sat next to him in an aggressive tone, what is most damn amazing is the level of secrecy involved. It’s totally outrageous. Cloak and dagger has very often been taken too far but this is quite ridiculous.

Indeed, it may seem it now. In hindsight the burying of it all for so long does seem unnecessary, but I hope people understand...

According to classified records we’ve now been given access to, seven men, just a seven man team along with its commander, and with just a very small number of support staff, were involved in a large scale anti-terrorist operation deemed too sensitive not only for the public, but apparently most people in authority, to ever even know about! A team that not only conducted operations in their own country of the UK, but also on American soil too, without the knowledge of any federal authority or Presidential approval! You’re telling us these seven guys secretly protected us from..?

Seven? A frown, a look of panic flashed briefly across the older woman’s features.

...yeah, from a threat we all thought was, well, already dealt with many more years before that, obviously. This really is quite the most incredible and absurd thing I’ve ever heard. Just what the hell justified you all to keep this from everyone else?! The doctor didn’t reply, she looked down at her feet like a child with no excuse for their behavior.

So you were charged with, basically, what? Ruth was finding it hard to keep up with who she should answer first. Simply RT1’s medical officer? Looking after the health of these seven men..?

No, six! That number is wrong. There were six of them in the team. As the Prime Minister’s already stated their names will be released soon and you’ll see that there were six. The line of young bureaucrats before her, representing the five members of the UN Security Council, seemed to stir uncomfortably. The original questioner, an American, gave her a cheeky grin.

Well ma’am, we’ve actually been given some names already. Seven names.

No, that can’t be. Colonel Morris ran RT1 himself and there were six operatives.

Ok, can we stop recording for a moment please? Let’s not be releasing anything inaccurate to the press that’s not gonna help the situation, and I’m sure all our representatives want complete accuracy on these events. A woman to Ruth’s right tapped at her laptop and then nodded to the American interviewer. We’ll just have to verify with you. Some of them stood and moved over to the door as several more besuited mandarins entered and began chattering quietly but avidly, occasionally glancing over at the older woman as she sat with her hands on her knees, conscious that her fingers had begun to shake. The American man, slightly older than the others though to Ruth he still looked like a college kid, approached her and began reading off a list of names in a slow and steady voice, as though he wasn’t sure she could understand him. She nodded slowly at each one, the names of young men she had become so well acquainted with during just four years of her life, but which had seemed so long at the time. Names she knew, people she liked and trusted, admired for their fearlessness and courage. They were, after all, just men. Well trained yes, hand-picked, of course. But they were vulnerable, especially at the end. When they gave their lives to the same fire that consumed the last of the KVA.

Then came another name. His name! Ruth swallowed hard. She had not expected this. His name, his very existence was supposed to have been wiped from all files and records of any kind. It was barely ever even mentioned at the time. He was not to be seen, not to be heard of. His involvement even more a classified, utterly deniable secret than RT1, the KVA and all the events involved. His participation was the real reason for the extreme depths of secrecy. Nobody wanted to talk about him ever. She had not, even now, expected to hear that name again.

No! she found herself almost spitting out the word angrily in a tone that surprised the young man. The chattering stopped as everyone in the room became transfixed by the newly aggressive glare in her eyes. No he was not one of them. Not one of my team. They were our protectors. I guess, I’d have to admit, he was sometimes theirs, but they were my heroes. Against the evil plans of a ruthless enemy they were our guardian angels. He was...something else...the devil.

Chapter 3

Jack snorted the warm liquid up into his left nostril, wincing at the sting of salt, then coughed and spat out a glob of blood into the sink. More blood oozed down from his nose and mingled with the hairs of his beard. He avoided looking at it in the mirror before him and continued to squirt the saline solution up his other nostril. More stinging salt, more coughing, even more blood, in the sink and pouring down over his lips. He rinsed his mouth and face with cold water and repeated the whole process again. He would have to do this for at least another week, possibly two, the doctors had told him. The detritus left by his sinus surgery would take some while to clear, and even then it wasn’t guaranteed that he’d get his sense of smell back. Yet again his mind speedily ran through the things he looked forward to smelling if he ever did: tequila, sizzling pork, cut grass, curry spices, gasoline, perfume, limes, even the car air-freshener, and most of all women. Their hair, always so clean and fragrant, perfumed skin, even their clothes always smelled good, he hadn’t really paid those little things much attention before but now those scents were lost to him Jack longed for them. Not today though. Today was blood, followed by blood. That was his life, and it was his job.

Lieutenant Jack Watson, detective, Serious Crimes Unit, New York Police Department. Ten years as a police officer, four of them as a detective. Now already second in command in the Unit Jack was a well-respected expert in unusual and extremely violent crime. So he washed the blood from the sink, rinsed his face again, and dressed as quick as he could, hearing young Detective Richton pull up outside to whisk him off to the latest terrible scene he would be tasked to deconstruct.

There was blood, a lot of it, as usual. There was a body, as usual. Then there was the suspect, already in custody, also as usual. Rarely did the Serious Crimes Unit find itself sleuthing away at an unsolved case, working their way through the evidence to find the as yet unknown perpetrator. Serious Crimes dealt almost exclusively with brutal murder, and in reality, the vast majority of killers were still on the scene when the emergency services arrived, usually known to their victim, most often a relative or close friend. Jack’s work didn’t involve much about finding criminals as often as it involved describing exactly what happened during the crime, either because the suspect would not, or could not co-operate in the description. He stepped carefully over the thresh-hold of the front door into what would normally have been a very typical, drab hallway in an ordinary house, on an ordinary street in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Simple, plain carpet, now splattered with dark blood, as dark as the wads of blood he’d spat out of his own mouth just twenty minutes earlier. Simple peach-colored walls, also spattered. His plastic covered shoes touched down gingerly between items of interest. A cell phone, blood covered. A small cushion, possibly from the lounge sofa, blood covered. A long bladed kitchen knife, blood covered. Finally he reached the end of the hall where it went on into the kitchen or turned right into the small lounge. There, lying in front of the sofa in a pool of thick, deep red which covered almost the entire carpet was the body of a woman. He couldn’t tell her age. She was face down, her arms raggedly out-stretched. Her bleached hair matted with gore. Jack could already see a number of stab wounds in her back and head. He suspected there’d be more at the front. This was repeated, enduring, an act of absolute hatred and vicious instinct.

The suspect, outside in a car still being watched by officers as the local neighborhood, mostly consisting on Puerto Rican and Mexican families, all gathered to gawp and shout, was apparently the latest boyfriend, according to Detective Atkinson who had spoken to the next door neighbour already. The three children who lived in the house too had been taken into that same neighbour’s house and were now being watched over by specialist officers while they waited for Social Services to collect them. They probably knew the ‘who’ of it then. They would discover the ‘why’ of it from talking to both suspect and witnesses. His job was just to be clear on the ‘how’ of it. Like most cases. Like almost every case since he’d been with S.C.U. Almost all, except their last case. The one that had eventually left him needing, of all things, surgery on his nose and upper sinuses to repair cell damage caused by breathing in...he still found it hard remembering that feeling. The pain and the fear. This scene before him, with all its gore, death and tragedy was much easier to stomach.

So the knife is in the hallway, no sign as yet of another weapon, Jack thought as he briefly glanced at the kitchen floor, no blood drops in there so the knife was brought in and the attack started either in the hallway or the living room. Too much blood and spatter in the hallway for it to have come from the uninjured suspect, if he was the perpetrator, so the attack started in the hallway and continued into the living room. So why was the cushion in the hall? It probably didn’t matter. It was probably something unimportant to the murder in the scheme of things, but that’s what they would ask in court, every detail, and his job was to answer. So...his thoughts were disturbed by a commotion outside, vehicles, not police but plain, unmarked vehicles still sporting flashing blue and red lights from their fronts and rears, had pulled up and people were getting out and pushing their way past the crime scene tape and the officers tasked with keeping everyone out. A man appeared at the front door, he seemed to not even notice the carnage in the hallway, as though there was nothing special to see. He looked straight at Jack and asked in a voice which had a well-spoken, in-charge sort of sort of sound like an army officer; Jack Watson? Lieutenant Jack Watson, Serious Crimes Unit?

Yeah, that’s me. I’m in the m...

Come with me please, sir. The man briskly stepped into the hallway, ignoring the police constable to his side who tried to put out a hand.

Watch where you step man, this is a crime scene you..! Jack was stopped mid-sentence as the man grabbed him by the shoulder of his jacket and tugged him, gently but firmly down the hall and out of the house. He considered punching the jerk in the face for being so unprofessional and disrespectful but as he felt his fist clench he caught sight of the man’s companions. Some were in plain clothes, though they still looked very official, others though were in military gear. MP5 sub-machineguns slung to their fronts. Two of them were actually pointing their weapons at some of the uniformed officers to make them back away. What the hell’s going on?

You’re now in our custody, sir. We’ve been ordered to pick you up and take you straight to the FBI offices on Federal Plaza.

What?! Jack stopped at the door to a black SUV. I can’t just...

JACK! The man’s voice was harder now. We need to go, now. His eyes had a sharp, serious look that said only one thing: This is not a negotiation. Jack got in and the group of vehicles sped off, lights flashing. Leaving a bewildered contingent of police officers and civilians standing around in a mix of excitement and confusion.

Chapter 4

We need to know everything, everything you saw, and everything you heard. The tough-looking woman in grey with red-rimmed spectacles tapped a pen on the table, one tap for each syllable. Jack felt more under pressure than during any job interview or court appearance. More pressure even than he imagined any of his suspects felt over the years during his interrogations of them. Yet he had been told categorically that he was not under arrest. He was not a suspect in any sort of crime, that he was in fact there to help ‘them’, whoever these people were, with their own inquiries into a case not directly concerning himself and, very oddly given the circumstances, that he was not being recorded or asked to speak under oath. They were interrogating him, but clearly this was to be kept so unofficial it could never be used in any sort of legal case and he was not the subject of their inquiry, though they didn’t mind making him feel like one to get results.

He looked around the large, dark room that sat, he guessed, somewhere in the middle of the tall building housing FBI headquarters in, Manhattan, New York. Smooth surfaces, metals and plastics, dusty silver and black. Only the table, some black molded chairs and another table off to one side with a jug of water and some glasses took up any space. The rest was bare. The lighting so low he couldn’t even make out the ceiling, which he supposed was also black. Everything about..?

Your previous case. The one during which you were injured. The sarin gas, and everything leading up to that point. Jack felt himself flinch at the mention of the words. He could feel the burning again in his nose, behind his eyes, in the back of his throat, and he could feel that hand gripping his neck, squeezing, crushing the life out of him, even though it had ironically saved his life by stopping him from breathing for several crucial moments.

Ok, where shall I start?

From the beginning of course, the tone was still unfriendly, and somewhat rushed, possibly even panicked. From the moment you first came in on the case.

Ok then. Well, it would be, about ten weeks ago almost exactly...

Up in the darkest corner of the black ceiling was a black camera. No light to say it was operating. No noise as it zoomed in and out on the Lieutenant while he talked. Colonel Simms, a trusted military advisor to the President, turned to the Secretary of Defense slowly and whispered. The description is extremely close. It’s gotta be him. What was he doing there? Angela Maynard, the first woman to hold the post in US history, didn’t take her eyes from the screen to answer the Colonel.

Looking for ways to kill people? she whispered. She watched the rest of the interview with Lieutenant Watson in silence. When it was over she continued to peer through the hidden camera’s lens at the face of the man they believe had encountered someone, something, that should not exist.

He certainly remembered details well, despite the injury he’d suffered and the loss of a colleague. Though clearly it was hard relating the facts, remembering back to moments when he’d witnessed a friend and fellow officer brutally murdered before himself being viciously attacked, there was still a calm strength in his voice, a professional manner which defied the intimidating circumstances of his interrogation. He was a good police officer, a good detective. Single. No known psychological problems. He’d rarely ever been abroad and certainly wouldn’t have any connections in foreign governments, perfect. The Secretary of Defense stood and left. She would see Professor Harker and tell him she’d found the right guy to complete his investigative field team.

Dr. Ruth Feinstein sat down heavily in the high-backed leather chair, thinking about the events of twenty years previous, and the way it was now all coming out. The Prime Minister actually seemed to have encouraged this whole thing. He threw the gates open when he allowed the press to be briefed just hours after claiming he’d first learned of RT1 and the KVA. Was this really just the new politics of openness and clarity? It was possible, Ruth thought. Something was making them all rush into the events of Operation Ghost, but it was the way they were doing it, releasing information quickly and then delving back in for more, it was as though they were looking for something. She sipped and felt the liquid burn soothingly in her dry mouth and down her throat.

Dr. Feinstein, a strong and highly experienced professional was not one to hide the truth from herself. She knew what they were looking for, it was obvious, or otherwise his name would never have been included in the list of RT1 members. This is a dangerous game, she thought. The brief snippets of information that were being trickled into the ears of the press each hour had a single purpose, to get the word out, dangling his name to the media like a worm on a hook. They are looking for him, she thought, he’s what they want.

Chapter 5

The Children of Ahnenerbe, Professor Conrad Harker stated. Certainly the most clandestine, top secret threat the world has faced in modern times. He smiled in a playful way not appreciated by more than half of those in attendance. That we know of anyway. The other half of the room allowed a very low murmur of chuckling to leave their self-consciously bowed heads. Head of the Politics of Conflict department at Harvard University, criminologist, expert in the fields of terrorist strategy, political policy related to conflict and author of several studies on the involvement of mercenaries by groups calling themselves everything from freedom fighters to the wrath of God. The Professor was THE man to speak to about covert political strategies involving military and terrorist organizations.

Now, as he briefed a room full of secretaries of